The rapper Ja Rule and “entrepreneur” Billy MacFarland organized what was billed as a “luxury two-weekend music festival” on a private island in the Bahamas, with Tyga and Blink-182 on the bill. Tickets were exorbitantly expensive—$1,000 to $12,000—and attendees included models and Instagram influencers such as Bella Hadid and former Pepsi spokesperson Kendall Jenner.

Rather than arriving by private jet to a luxurious island paradise, festival goers found that the physical infrastructure for the festival was not put in place, leaving them to fend for themselves. A dinner that was to be catered by a celebrity chef turned out to be a cheese sandwich on wheat Wonder bread, and there were no luxury accommodations to be found—instead, they found what some described as a refugee camp.

Gabby FitzGerald, a Columbia University sophomore booked an eight-room “lodge” that was shown online with private bathrooms, but when she arrived, she was told that was not available and was offered a tent with a communal bathroom in a trailer.

Most of us only dream of putting the wealthy in a gulag, Comrade Ja has actually gone and done it #fyrefestival

“I have a picture of a disaster relief camp in South America, and it’s the exact same thing. The geodomes are the U.S. aid relief domes. And everything was wet, all the mattresses were wet,” FitzGerald told Vice. “They took all the luggage from the airport and put it in a giant shipping crate and drove it around.”

More at Fader here and here, including jokes about reparations and gulags.

The tents at the luxury music festival “Fyre Festival”. (Via Fader via Source)